The history and antiquities of the collegiate church of All Saints, Ma

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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1845 edition. Excerpt: ... the service of religion; in the means of luxury brought within the reach of the humblest; and in the graceful piety that consecrated the choicest offerings to the gods,--we recognise the joyous character of ancient civilization, and the universal and systematic appreciation of art. It was as though through Polychromy the ancients gave expression to the brighter and more ethereal impulses of the mind; Polychromy was the link connecting the forms of matter with the airy fancies in which classic genius was so rife; it clothed the massive outlines of Egyptian architecture with a life and grace only subordinate to that deep soul of thought that lives in every stone and lurks in every figure: while the eye of the artist is no less delighted with the exquisite management of colour that can unite the heavy masses of its architecture with the burning soil and shadowless sky of that glowing clime. Nor would there be any thing inconsistent in associating similar ideas with our national architecture, adding to the solemnity of our ecclesiastical edifices a winning beauty that should be ever present in the temples of a religion, that allures as much as it commands to the observance of its duties and the participations of its hopes. Decorative painting has again assumed its place among the fine arts; every new fragment that turns up only adds to the mass of evidence that has convinced those who refused to believe in Grecian Polychromy, and every instance of church restoration proves to those admirers of pointed architecture, who were equally zealous in their detestation of whitewash and love of native stone, that even in the palmy days before the Reformation, walls and stone-work were not only whited or yellow washed, but that the surface of the...